A break from the Lion, mentally and physically

The American Lion will not be going to Alaska until later this year so I decided to take a break from it mentally as well as physically.  I like to take a mental break from a sculpture(if I can) so I can come back to it with "fresh eyes". Then any mistake really jumps out at me.  I use a mirror a lot while working to get a fresh view of a piece I'm working on, but time and especially turning your mind to something else entirely helps a lot.  This photo of me was taken with a Trail camera - more about that at the end of the post....

To mentally clear my palate I decided to go into a figurative piece I started working on a few years ago.  The pieces name is Conversation.  This is the upper 1/3 of a young woman lying on the ground.  Plants will make up her midsection and there will be stone legs from the knee to feet.
At this point she is fairly clunky and everything is heavy, face, arms, hair, hands.

There are many things wrong with the piece, mistakes I have made along the way that I will now be correcting.  The main problem is that the face is too far out from the hairline.  In the photos below I am refining forms and trying to reduce the heaviness of the face.

I have gotten the forehead back but the brows are now too prominent.  I have started to define the shoulders and hands.

I have taken the brows back but the lips are way too full and the chin is a bit heavy.  The face still needs a lot of refining though it is better than when I started out.

This is a piece I have also been working on (mainly on rainy days) though I can't find the early photos showing  the armature and early stages of adding clay.  I might have accidently picked them up with other photos and put them in a folder.  They'll turn up eventually.

The armature is galvanized pipe I bought from JBB which has an extensive selection of plumbing pipe and fittings.  The pipe I used for this sculpture is fairly small (I believe it is 3/8") and they ordered it especially for me.  The pipe runs through his back and goes out to each hip and each shoulder. A section of pipe runs halfway down each forearm and half way down each upper leg.  I am using hard castilene over the pipe frame and it works wonderfully.  It is as hard as wax and so there is no need for an armature in the lower arms and lower legs.  I work the castilene with a heat gun.

What is this little boy doing?  You'll just have to wait and see....

Another project I have been working on is a time lapse video of me working on the Lion.  I have uploaded two sections (number 1 and 5 of 8) see them here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zunMiP9WNCw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWYwlE1AwIk